2How Does a Machine Learn?

The two children sat with Fawzooz in his room, in front of his desk. Fawzooz said, “Artificial intelligence is the science of making machines and programs that think and learn like people. Do you know how we learn from our experiences?”

The little boy said, “Yes, we learn from our mistakes, and from the things we do every day.” Fawzooz said, “Exactly! Computers that use AI learn in the same way, and we call it machine learning.”

“Computers learn and get smarter over time, just as we learn from experience.”

Fawzooz took out a tablet, showed them a picture of a cat, and said, “Imagine this computer has never seen a cat. To teach it, we give it thousands of pictures of cats and tell it: this is a cat. After a while, it can recognise a cat by itself, even in a picture it has never seen.”

The little girl said in amazement, “That’s just like how we learn when we see things and try them!” Then she thought for a moment and asked, “And what if we taught it wrong, and told it a dog was a cat?” Fawzooz laughed and said, “Then it would call every dog in the village ‘Here, kitty!’ A machine learns what we teach it, whether it’s right or wrong.”

The little boy asked, “Can it learn anything?” Fawzooz answered, “It can learn to drive cars, understand speech, play games, even write stories. But the most important thing is knowing how to teach it, and how to use it responsibly.”